The Pitfalls Of Watching Soccer On Satellite TV

Sometimes readers ask me why I don’t have DirecTV or DISH Network. One of the main reasons why was on display today, and it’s definitely one of the pitfalls of watching soccer on satellite television.The culprit is the weather in South Florida. During the summer here, you can almost guarantee that by 2pm that the major thunderstorms will roll in and the rain comes pouring down. When that happens, you lose the satellite signal and you have to wait for the storm to pass before the TV programming returns. Sometimes that can be 20 minutes or more.

When your satellite signal is at the mercy of the weather, there’s no telling when it’ll ruin your soccer watching experience. This is exactly what happened today. Watching the Russia against Holland quarter-final in a local pub, the DirecTV signal was lost two to three times during the match, leaving us with blank screens for several minutes during the match.

The worst part of this is that we missed a key moment in the match near the end of the 90 minutes. When we frustratingly lost the DirecTV signal around the 80th minute mark, several of the pub patrons pulled out their Blackberry’s to give us updates on the game as we waited for the ABC signal to return. One of the customers yelped that Ruud van Nistelrooy just scored an equalizer. It’s one thing to see the goal in person, but when you hear someone blurt it out after reading it on a Blackberry, it pissed me off because I wasn’t able to see it on TV.

Hurricane season in Florida is from June 1st to November 30. So for six months out of the year, there’s no guarantee that you’ll be able to watch your soccer matches when you want to.

Cable is definitely the better option but Setanta Sports isn’t available on Comcast. Unless a major announcement will be made this summer, I may sign up for Setanta Broadband instead.

About The Author

Publisher of World Soccer Talk, Christopher Harris founded the site in 2005. He has been interviewed by The New York Times, The Guardian and several other publications. Plus he has made appearances on NPR, BBC World, CBC, BBC Five Live, talkSPORT and beIN SPORT.
Harris, who was born and raised in Wales, has lived in Florida since 1984, and supported Swansea City since 1979. Last but not least, he got engaged during half-time of a MLS game.

8 Comments

JLayJune 21, 2008

Bad Luck, Gaff! I lost my signal about 10 minutes after the match ended…

I’ll take the loss of reception a handful of times/year over all the BS monopoly attitude Comcast gives us any day. DTV gives me much better options and quality customer service…they’ll continue to get my money.

Your satellite antena probably needs re-alignment. Your IRD can give the current BER (Bit Error Rate) count. If its more than 4 then you’ll probably loose your signal on averag size t-storms. If its 4 or less it will take a hell of a storm for you to loose reception. So check out the BER and give DTV a call.

In AZ we get short, but INTENSE rain bursts in summer, and I’ve only had 3-4 occasions of severe pixelization, and one 5 min. outage during that time. Typically, the picture clears up while it’s still raining, just not so hard.

Could the set-up of a public location be part of the issue? or do homeowners get the same ratios of problems?

I have to many trees on my lot for satellite. I picked up Setanta Broadband. Overall I’m pleased with the service and like the portability. The only drawback is they don’t have all the broadband rights, so some games that are available on satellite, are blacked out online.